Tony White was Creative Entrepreneur in Residence in the Department of French at King’s College London funded by Creativeworks London. White worked with Dr Sanja Perovic in the Department of French on a project exploring the work of British artist Stuart Brisley. White’s new novel draws – amongst other things – on research undertaken during his residency at King’s.

When a brutally murdered man is found hanging in a Covent Garden theatre, Detective Sergeant Rex King becomes obsessed with the case. Who is this anonymous corpse, and why has he been ritually mutilated? But as Rex explores the crime scene further, the mystery deepens, and he finds himself confronting his own secret history instead. Who, more importantly, is Rex King? Shifting between Holborn Police Station, an abandoned village in rural 1980s France, and the Battle of the Beanfield at Stonehenge, The Fountain in the Forest transforms the traditional crime narrative into something dizzyingly unique. At once an avant-garde linguistic experiment, thrilling police procedural, philosophical meditation on liberty, and counter-culture bildungsroman, this is an iconoclastic novel of unparalleled ambition.

In advance of publication, Faber and Faber have released an exclusive sampler of Chapter 1 on their website.

The Fountain in the Forest is the first of three novels by White which explore the ninety days between the end of the UK Miners’ Strike on 3 March and the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ on 1 June 1985 through the lens of the French Republican Calendar.

Tony White will be appearing at events and festivals throughout 2018, to give readings and to talk about The Fountain in the Forest and associated themes and issues.

To be informed about such events see local listings, subscribe to Tony’s mailing list or follow @tony_white_ on Twitter.

Pre-order The Fountain in the Forest